Aphelion : A Treasure Planet Fanfiction
by sultal
Summary: Aliens took the humans from earth. They named them after constellations. They held them prisoner for game and for slaughter. Corvus lost hope...until she met Daniel Helios Doppler, his family, a cutthroat cyborg, and James Pleiades Hawkins. Then she REALLY lost hope.
1. Chapter 1: Warning

**Chapter One: Warning**

This story is hard.

This story is repulsive.

This story…is mine.

You probably can't handle it.

So this is your warning.

They call me Corvus.

And this is my story.


	2. Chapter 2: Cygnus

**Chapter Two:** **Cygnus**

I was a normal kid. Earth meant little more to me than a word, the weird classroom panoramic map, and the stuff environmentalists wanted to protect. But that was the significant limit of the definition.

It certainly did not mean _home_.

But all that changed.

I was a normal kid but lucky enough to be a good runner. Unmatured and antisocial, I got hooked into running in middle school. It didn't really hurt (like my dad said it would), so I didn't stop. In seventh grade, I made varsity cross country, running second, sometimes first, for the team. My priorities in life were my neon trainers, plenty of chocolate ice cream in the freezer for post-race muchies, and finally gunning up the courage to talk to the boy I'd had a crush on for three years.

Like I said, I was a normal kid.

Then, we raced at state qualifiers.

And my life on Earth ended.

I remember that it was cold. I was wearing spanks and spandex top under my jersey. It was November, too late for sun, too early for snow. The ground was so hard I could feel each spike under my flats.

The gun raised. The flag lifted.

"Run like the wind, baby girl!" the senior beside me said. She rubbed my arm. Slapped my butt. I don't remember her name. But it was last thing someone said to me on Earth.

The gun shot, cracking into the cold.

The runners surged, clustered, and ran. But we never finished.

The sky darkened. I looked up into the hull of a spaceship.

Kaleidoscope lights splintered into my eyes. My atoms and electrons were ripped apart and reassembled across time and space. There wasn't enough oxygen on the ship. Hypoxemia set and acid oversaturated my lungs and brain within seconds. I was intubated with a tube passing up my nose, through my windpipe, and into my bronchial tubes. They took a needle, thin as thread and long as my arm. They squirted metallic liquid. Then, they slid the needle into my ear.

Luckily, I passed out.

I woke up once, for the tattoo. At least, I called it a tattoo. Later I would be told what it really was.

Before they placed the tattoo, I remember tasting metal. I remember smelling gunpowder through the blood dribbling out of my nose. I remember one of them pointing to the ceiling at a thousand impossible constellations. I remember seeing the eleven small stars before they were burned into my left shoulder blade.

"Corvus." the thing hissed, brushing burned, twisted skin from my back. "We call you Corvus."

I would later learn that the tattoo was a brand, marking us as _Gaians_ from the planet _Gaia_ (_humans_ from the planet _Earth_). Each tattoo was a Milky Way constellation, picked at random from the Earth's night sky. Each one of us was given a constellation, and named for the constellation or a star within the line.

Each one of us….branded. Like cattle.

Each one of us…

I would later find out that they took the strongest, fastest, smartest, and shrewdest of groups. Construction workers. Gold medalists. Doctors. Stunt men. Farmers. Coast guard. Mechanics. College lacrosse players. Child prodigies. High school stars.

Everyone else, they killed. Left on the planet to blister and burn.

For some reason, maybe because I was winning the race… the aliens took me.

"Another for the slaughter."

They dumped me in a dark, clean cell with double panel windows and a long tunnel. I groped the window but it only glimmered under my hand, changing color like a lava lamp.

Through my reflection, I saw more of them.

Aliens. Hundreds of them. Bulging, slithering, spitting, growling, hovering, grinning, laughing, smirking, watching, pointing…

I backed from the window. I bumped into the other. As the pane blossomed turquoise, pink, and gold beneath my head, it hit me.

_A zoo. I was being displayed. Held captive. In a zoo._

"Hey. Hey."

"Ah!" I held my ears. I rock my head and jabbed in my finger, trying to stop the sharp pains.

Someone rubbed my temples, massaging away the pain.

"It's okay. The pain's from the injection. It helps you understand what they're saying. They put the same thing in your throat – a language filter. But you won't be able to speak for a few days."

I stopped writhing. I looked up.

It was a woman. A human woman.

She was hallow cheeked, filthy with freckles, and seized me with huge, powerful eyes.

"They call me Cygnus." she said, tilting her left shoulder. The asterism of stars crossed over her shoulder blade. "The swan. What did they call you?"

I shook my head. The aliens passed by the windows. The ground was vibrating beneath me. Above us, through the end of the tunnel, something was booming. Thundering. Screaming. Applauding.

Cygnus tapped my left shoulder. It was still hot.

"What did they call you?"

I shook my head. The vibrations swelled, shaking colors across the windows. My shoulder throbbed as Cygnus traced the tattoo.

Then, I remembered.

_Corvus. We call you Corvus._

"Kxxhhku – kkxhk – orf—uz." I tasted blood. I felt like barbed wire was caught in my throat. "Khu-or-vz. Kh-or-vuz."

"Corvus." A man spoke from the tunnel passageway. He looked up, wide shoulders pressed against a group of onlookers. All human. He laid solemn eyes over me. "The crow."

"Cygnus." A second man spoke, younger and fairer than the first. He spoke sharply, but gazed soft as starlight. "Cygnus. They won't wait."

"One minute, Altair." Cygnus smoothed hair from my eyes, ignoring both the humans and the growing vibrations. "She's just a kid. She's scared."

"She should be." I looked. A boy my age, with hair red as fire looked back. He gestured down the tunnel. "She's got the Linguath."

I tried to follow the shudder around the room. But in the darkness, I could only make out gruesome expressions.

Panicked, I suddenly was very aware of the vibrations under my feet and the pounding in my ears. They were coming from the end of the tunnel.

"Linguath." Cygnus murmured. She stroked my tattoo, contemplatively. "Then that means…there's still hope."

The vibrations roared as she lifted her eyes. Even in the dark, they glowed sky blue.

"Do you know what the tattoo does?"

I stared. I didn't need to shake my head.

Cygnus lowered her arm. "Three things: It marks you as a human being. Gaian…human. Same thing. It also gives a name for them to call you."

The vibrations were deafening. Cygnus leaned to be heard.

"But…the tattoo also contains a chemical. A chemical that they can activate at any time. And if you try to escape…" Gently, Cygnus splayed her fingers. "…the chemical goes through your skin and into your blood. And…it will kill you."

Cygnus crouched. Her lips pressed against my ear. "But…I was taken by a Linguath. And I think….I think that it does something…changes you…inside…so…there may be a chance for esc – "

"Cygnus." Altair stepped forward. The walls trembled with the vibrations. "Cygnus. They're coming."

The tunnel doors opened. I smelled something rancid and sour. Roaring pealed louder than police sirens. Lights, like four pairs of eyes, bobbed down the tunnel.

Cygnus turned to me. She spoke fast. "Corvus. Listen. You go after me. So this is what I want you to do…" Her shoulders stiffened and her muscles were taut as arrows.

"Go out there. Close your eyes. _And let the Linguath take you_. This is your first time, so they won't try to kill you. But…" compassion milked her eyes. "…they _will_ humiliate you. Let them. This one time…_let them win_."

Cyngus rose. The four pairs of eyes materialized into a single alien with fangs and crackling whips.

"You will be scared. Very, very scared. But, for one second you will get mad. Right here, you will feel it: extreme, utter anger."

Cygnus punched my chest. "Keep it. Use it. Become it. Because if you can't…they will kill you."

The alien hissed. The humans buckled, stung by the whips. Eyes narrowed, it headed for Cygnus.

But Cygnus was calm.

"Here…" Carefully, she unlatched a necklace. She pressed it, a black chain with a black pendant, into my hand. I looked. It was a wing – one of those commercial angel wings. Black plastic metal inset with black stones. She probably got it at a supermarket chain or department store. On Earth.

I thought of the name they gave me. Corvus. The crow.

Cygnus smiled. She rose as the alien approached. "Hold it for me."

Turning, Cyngus kissed Altair. Silently, she followed the alien through the tunnel. "In case I don't come back."

It was a good thing she gave it to me.

Because Cygnus never came back.


	3. Chapter 3: Rape

**Chapter Three: Rape**

I stumbled over Cygnus' remains and into the stadium.

I didn't notice her blood on my running flats, because the stadium was monstrous. It stretched higher than the clouds and stacked every manner of alien into waterfall seating from ceiling to floor.

Lights blazed and cameras flashed when I entered, digitalizing my face to rotating screens as an announcer wailed. "FIRST FIGHT IN THE COLISEUMMMMMMMMMMMM! I GIVE YOUUUUUUUU CORRRRVUS THE GAIAN! FUN MATCH – SINGLE VERSUS SINGLE– GAIAN VERSUS LINGUATH – ODDS 1 TO 1000. NOT TO THE DEATH! PLLLLLACE YOUR BETS!"

The aliens crawled like insets in a hive, pointing and laughing at my bare legs and tight uniform. But my embarrassment was incomparable to what the Linguath did to me.

The Linguath.

I use to be scared of monsters under the bed. But when I saw the Linguath, I felt fear. Real fear. Fear that freezes you like ice and rips out your spine. Fear that makes you want to cry and scream. Fear that makes you wish you were dead.

The Linguath was a monster. Spotlights glistened over its body – a humanized glob glued together with tar, slime, string, and bone. No eyes. Only sensors to smell…

…and…taste.

I did what Cygnus said. I stood out there. But I couldn't close my eyes.

I wish that I had.

The Linguath subdued me in second. It threw me like a doll. The aliens roared as I slammed onto the blood stained ground. Beams strobed into my eyes and dazzled against the linguath as it crawled up my legs and over my hips.

Then, I felt it.

Something sticky. Rolling up my thigh.

I looked, raising an arm to the lights.

The linguath gargled and spit, almost giddily. I squinted. Then, I almost threw up.

A tongue. A tongue, long and alive, dripped over needle teeth. It dropped like a snake, nosing up my leg, under my running spandex…

…and inside me.

The aliens cheered. But I could not hear. Because I was screaming.

The next day, Aldebaran woke me up.

He turned me over. He kept me there with solemn eyes.

"Are you ready?" he said in an throaty, drawn out accent.

I stared over his wide shoulders. Nine humans gazed at me.

"For what?"

Aldebaran's eye glinted. Rising, he pressed against the humans.

"To survive."

I remembered the linguath. I remembered the humiliation. I remembered the pain.

I remembered the anger.

Slowly, I lifted. I clenched my fists against the rage devouring my heart.

Cygnus's black wing pendant bit into my hand.

_They wanted a crow. _

_Well I would give them a crow._

"Yes."

That was how it started.

That is how it has remained.

And that is what I thought it would always be.

Then…I met Daniel Helios Doppler.


End file.
